


eyes like fire, skin like rain

by PaddyWack



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: M/M, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-23
Updated: 2018-10-23
Packaged: 2019-08-06 14:12:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16389206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaddyWack/pseuds/PaddyWack
Summary: Eddie is good at building walls.Well. Was.





	eyes like fire, skin like rain

**Author's Note:**

> i'm sorry. i just really wanted to be a part of this fandom. i don't know what this is, i'm still trying to learn the characters and i have a weakness for broken/sad!eddie. please be kind?

Eddie is good at building walls.

 

He has to be – not just because of his profession, which demanded early on that he separate himself from the stories he’s reporting no matter how god awful they may be, and also half his soul as a down payment – but because of, well, other things. Personal things.

 

It took him years to master the skill of blocking. And, yeah, he knows it’s not the best way to deal with things. Christ knows Anne gave him the speech dozens of times –

 

_Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it._

Anyway. He deals, and it works. He builds walls, tucks things away nice and neat and puts a giant padlock on the whole thing, and then he moves on. Sometimes there’s a leak, of course, which is expected from such faulty coping, and he has to go about plugging the weak spots and reinforcing the wall, but he’s ready for that type of thing and has a certain failsafe here and there to help.

 

So, yeah, he’s good at walls.

 

Well. _Was._

See, Venom doesn’t take kindly to that sort of thing. It’s like an insult. A _big_ one.

 

As a unit, they don’t really get a chance to address such ‘concerns’ until after the whole thing with Drake and nearly dying and saving _the whole freaking planet_ – just your typical Tuesday, really. But once it’s over and settled down and the lawsuit is on a fast-track to a hefty ‘keep your damn mouth shut’ payout signed by some dweeb in a suit named Nick Fury, Eddie suddenly finds himself struggling to maintain composure.

 

His walls have been torn down. No, not torn, completely destroyed. Decimated. Reduced to crumbled piles of ash and dust. Eddie was left reeling throughout the entire experience as a shaking, trembling, blubbering, goddamn mess piloted by an alien with a burgeoning vigilante complex. Or something.

 

Whatever, the point was that Eddie had spent a considerable amount of time protecting himself before because life fucking hurts, okay? And some people – some people just have a harder time than others dealing with it. Some people have been scalded way too many times to try living without a pair of safety gloves every now and then.

 

So, when he has a second to breathe, he tries to fix it all again because this is what he _needs –_

 

_Stop._

Eddie flinches. The pencil he had been fidgeting with in his hands snaps. He ends up holding each end in his hands like daggers poised for battle. He feels Venom halting his progress and struggles for the upper hand.

 

“Knock it off.” He clutches the side of his head and narrows his eyes at the table. He doesn’t know how to articulate the necessity of what he’s doing, how to impart upon a foreign body how vital it is for his own health that he be able to lock certain things away. Venom isn’t human, he doesn’t know that confronting things – _bad things_ – will totally fucking break Eddie.

 

“Let me do this. I have to do this.”

 

He doesn’t even try to hide his desperation. He doesn’t care that he’s essentially pleading with an entity that has hardly any concept of human emotion, one that’s more inclined toward visceral intent rather than grasping the unholy shitstorm of feelings that consumes biological function.

 

_No. It is a useless practice. We no longer need it._

Eddie gapes, appalled, and directs his disbelief inward with a force. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, all right? I definitely need it.”

 

_No_. Venom shoots the denial back with just as much heat, adamant that he should not be blocked and caged in such a manner. _That is not how this works._

“It’s going to have to be,” Eddie snaps, pushing himself up from the table and pacing. He gestures angrily with his hands to make his point, shoulders hunched protectively around his ears. He can actually feel the crazy leaking off him like oil, coating his skin like a disease and spilling grossly onto the floor. “There’s some things I – things that…fuck. Look, I can’t explain this to you.”

 

Already, he feels trapped. Can’t Venom sense that? Can’t he sense that there are places in Eddie’s head that have him so spooked he can barely walk a straight line? Places that force him to keep his eyes pinned to his own feet, pinned to the floor, because god forbid if he glances up or looks too quickly around a corner. There are things waiting there, things waiting to jump him with a vengeance.

 

Since the fallout, Eddie hasn’t slept. He eats only enough to keep the two of them functioning. He moves constantly; walks the streets all night, all day, not so they can find bad people and give them their rightful due, which is still a big part of it, but because if he stops for even a moment, a second, just a pause, those things will find him.

 

There are monsters, and then there are _monsters._

 

_Eddie._

 

Just because he has Venom now doesn’t mean any of that disappears. Just because he has Venom now doesn’t mean he’s allowed to forget, that he can pretend none of it matters anymore – it does matter. It’s so fucking important, and he has to remember that. Always.

 

_Eddie –_

He reaches the end of the room, twists and paces back to the table, turns and paces to the wall, jerks to the left and circles back around the table. Desperation and panic build like a wave as he feels himself starting to look, and god no he doesn’t want to look, but thinking about it so much makes it almost impossible _not_ to, and now he has no protection from any of it because the walls are gone, broken, and he’s terrified trying to pick up the pieces but they won’t fit back together and yet they have to fit please fuck why can’t they just fit…

 

A scream builds in his throat.

 

He’s biting his tongue so hard he tastes blood.

 

Venom rushes to the surface then, and the effect is so dizzying that Eddie stumbles and nearly falls over. Black ink floods his mouth and he chokes a little, coughing and trying to spit it out. And then he does fall over, thrown to the floor with a strangled grunt and pinned there as Venom materializes in a crouch above him. There’s one thick tendril connecting them, pulsing from the center of Eddie’s chest.

 

“ _You will cease immediately,_ ” Venom snarls, low and dangerous, and Eddie can only stare in mute shock at the manifestation. “ _You are spiraling. The effect is sending too many signals through your nervous system and will soon cause an attack._ ”

 

He finds himself unable to respond, frozen with equal amounts of horror and awe. Venom’s lips pull back even further over his ridiculous teeth, and his eyes narrow to slits. Eddie can feel his frustration as it floods their bond. Frustration toward trying to block him out, at the incorporeal memories that cause such heartrending pain, and the utter uselessness of trying to fight it.

 

Venom’s stream of consciousness flows in smooth undulations of a simple problem-rectify-finish equation. Eddie’s blasts about like fireworks, maiming like a berserker. He can feel Venom attempting to contain the mess, smother it out like he would for any other harmful pathogen, but such an approach is ineffective for something like this.

 

“I’m not hurt,” he tries to explain, a little breathless. “It’s in my head. You can’t fix it.”

 

Venom’s body hums with repressed rage. “ _You dare suggest we cannot take care of us?_ ”

 

Eddie squeezes his eyes shut. “It’s not like that.”

 

There’s a moment of tense silence as Eddie struggles to _not look don’t look_ and anchor himself in the here, in the now that is happening in this moment, to be present and not get lost, to not drown, and he fights for it but he’s tired, so tired of resisting and trying to push it all away and behind the piles of useless rubble that can’t keep anything back anymore.

 

He’s exhausted.

 

Above him, Venom makes a sound as if he has come to some sort of epiphany. “ _Eddie…_ ” he murmurs, such a difference from the hateful snarl of before, and even more surprising is the hand that curls so carefully around the back of Eddie’s head, somehow gentle despite the razor-like claws at the tips. “ _Eddie…I can help._ ”

 

Dully, Eddie opens his eyes and stares blearily into the white-scythe like orbs looking back at him. He wonders if Venom can sense the self-loathing, guilt, despair and bone-shaking fear boiling over, if he can feel the ghost of memories freezing the blood in their veins, eking out every bit of life left in this dried out husk.

 

“ _Yes_ ,” Venom answers the unspoken question, and lifts Eddie into the mass forming his chest, the blackness warm despite its appearance, and solid. Cradling him, like something terribly fragile. Eddie aches with the realization that, just like every other good thing that has ever happened in his life, he will inevitably see this destroyed like all the others.

 

Venom hums against him again, flooding their connection with – understanding. Acceptance. With an unshakeable resolve that kind of takes Eddie by surprise. He blinks and stares at nothing, quailing from the promise there because it seems too good to be true. He’d been down this road before – with Anne, and before her, others who always ended up disappointed and disgusted, shaking their heads at the failure he tried not to be, at the good he tried to do.

 

“ _We are not like them. We are different.”_ His hold tightens on Eddie, refusing any thoughts of escape. “ _We will be here together. Always._ ”

 

Eddie kind of understand, then. As the villains in his head go quiet, and the fears and anxieties stop screaming so loud, he reaches out a tentative touch to – well, Venom. The presence living inside. The organism attached to his brain. The thing that is gathering up the broken pieces and holding it all together – not like his walls. Something stronger than that.

 

_“We will never leave, Eddie.”_

And he feels the difference like a breath of relief. It’s a far cry from how things were before, but, timidly, he thinks that might be okay. That maybe this could work. At least, he’s willing to give it a try.


End file.
